Fighting windmills? Go on.

Slightly Violated

What is the difference between Iran and the real wolrd?

***

At 1:00am January 1, 2009 I was in the office of Radio Liberty Azerbaijan, surrounded by youth, intellectuals, public figures and employees of RFE/RL. An hour before that, the radio they were working for was taken off the FM, and from that moment on, they would have to broadcast on SW, Satellite and Internet, losing most of their followers.

We would drink shampaigne, celebrating the Saddest New Year Ever, preparing ourselves for the difficulties 2009 was promising… and sadly kept its promise.

***

Going through the web-page of one of the main Azerbaijani media sources couple of days ago, I saw an article in bold headline, which said: “A Turkish woman severely beaten by the Norwegian police”. So I clicked on it.

A small article told a story taken from CNN Turk, about a woman in Norway, who mistakenly called the police instead of the emergency, for her mother who was having a diabetes attack. When police arrived, the woman was being impatient and rude and for some unknown reason got beaten up by the officers. While the terrible act was happening, the mother died, left without medical care.

Although the article didn’t provide with any more facts, neither did the only mentioning of this fact I could find online – on CNN Turk, the fact itself was quite disturbing. But there also was this last paragraph, added by the author of the local source, which was, not only disturbing, but also ridiculous and in fact, terrifying. It said: “The most surprising here is that Norway, which tends to judge other countries, including Azerbaijan for the slightest (!! remember this word while reading my post) violations of human rights, better take care about its own democracy”.

Now, about the “slightest vilations”. As Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines says in her blog, this year started even worse than the previous one. Eynulla Fatullayev was ensured not to leave the prison any time soon, Emin and Adnan’s court hearings are being postponed. But the worst happened in a village Beneniyar in Nakchivan region of Azerbaijan, where after marking the Ashura date, more than 150 villagers were arrested and interrogated, including villager Kamal Aliyev, his wife and daughter. His son Yunis, poured gasoline over himself threatening the policeman who was holding his family to set himself on fire. “Do it, if you’re a man”, was the policeman’s response. So he did.

Right after that, 500 Internal Troopers, entered the village, people were taken out of their houses, beaten up, and humiliated. According to the villagers, the exits from the village are blocked, telephone calls are being tracked and get cut, once someone calls to Baku.

Guess what – only couple of news agencies reported it. Most of the work was made by Radio Liberty.

And this is not the end – today the official (!!) statement of Nakhichevan Representative Office in Baku was released. According to it, Yunis Aliyev, as well as his whole family and relatives (thoughtfully counted one by one) are mentally ill, and the “illegal acts” happened in the village were caused by the “illegal armed groups of the Popular Front”. However, both the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan and the one of Nakhchivan DENY anything happening on the area.

So, yes, Norwegian police has killed a woman of different ethnicity and religion and it’s bad. We can start talking about racism among Norwegian police, discuss the oppressions of muslim population in Europe, about the problems they face, but not about the ones they cause. Some of it will be true, some not, new laws will be implemented to make them feel comfortable, more population will be against these laws or visa versa. But the main thing we.. no, not we, THEY forget about is that while we fish facts of racist killings in Europe, people of our own ethnicity and religion are being beaten, humiliated, trapped or missing on our own territory by our own POLICE. And no, we don’t consider it a crime, we don’t talk or write about it. Even when we’re supposed to, as media.

No evil happens here. It simply doesn’t exist.

***

Iranian Television aired a documentary film, which tells the “real” story of Neda‘s death. According to the latest “research”, she was an agent of USA and Britain (apparently jointly organized espionage) and her death was faked. The blood on her face came from a bottle (!) she thoughtfully brought to the demonstration in order to organize this pre-planned show.